3.) Yellow tulip earrings by April Is Forever - I'm not one for yellow usually, but these beadwoven earrings are so delicate and just right for Spring being (hopefully!) just around the corner

4.) Wee Blue Flower Brooch by Pats Paraphernalia - there are some talented polymer clay people out there and I am in awe of people who can make such detailed canes as these butterfly wing influenced ones

5.) Silver Disc Earrings with Green Jasper by Cinnamon Jewellery - the jasper beads in these beautiful earrings are a fabulous bright contrast against the silver metal

6.) Organic Peacock lampwork bead set by Kilo Lemur Lampwork - I have way too many lampies in my bead stash already but I am finding it hard to resist this gorgeous set which have a peacock-feather like pattern on them

Hope you enjoyed the picks...hopefully I will have some beady bits of my own to show you after the weekend as I have (a very rare) whole Saturday to myself tomorrow to use creatively.

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Sorry for the gap in blog updates...there's no beadwork to show as I've been working on bridal jewellery for a fantastic friend who gets married in July. Whilst I think it's very unlikely her husband to be will read this blog, I still feel I should keep it a secret until the big day - you can see photos afterwards I promise! I can tell you that the necklace I am making for her involves a lovely slinky twisted herringbone rope, which is a stitch I rarely use but am enjoying immensely.

I have been knitting though, and finally finished my first pair of socks, knitted on 2 circular needles. I picked up the funky self striping Regia yarn at the Knitting & Stitching Show in October and started off on a different pattern but the instructions were very confusing and not designed for 2 circulars, so that got frogged and I instead turned to Ravelry and found this pattern called Eleanor.

So here they are all finished!!

So what's next for my knitting needles? Well, I recently bought a book about toe up sock knitting which has some gorgeous patterns in. It's called Socks from the toe up by Wendy D Johnson - find it here, and after much thought I have decided to knit the very sweet hearts and flowers socks, using my gorgeous new sock yarn from Wharfdale Woolworks.

So here is everything gathered together ready to go into my bag for some knitting on the bus to work.

And a close up of the yarn, just because it's fab!

Now I mentioned metal piercing in this blog post title, so I also have a little peak at what I got up to on Saturday afternoon armed with my piercing saw and a practice sheet of aluminium. I've had an idea for a pendant (although it will require soldering and I don't currently own a torch) so I wanted to try out one of the components...it's a little bigger than I'd want it to be in the real thing, but I wanted to have a play with using my saw blade to 'draw' some detail in as it were.

Can you guess who inspired this? It hasn't been finished off - the edge could definitely do with filing (I await the arrival of a set of needle files for this) and I'm not sure about the eyes (I think they look a bit zombie scary!) but I am happy with it as a trial run. I have another prototype ready to pierce for real, i.e. out of silver (eek) that I hope I can use to enter some beading competitions this year, but I'm not sure when I'll next get a spot of free time to get the saw out again.